The End of Dragons

There were not always dragons in the Valley. It is hard to believe now, child, but in times gone by they were out in the open. Rarely do they come out now, but back then you could see them in the sky, flying freely and fiercely, the sun bursting off of their fiery bodies, deflecting and reflecting light like a shining shield against a blazing sword. And it was not so long ago either, my dear, although it is now called the age of fire, which feels so, sooo distant – but no, I am not telling you some dull, worn out tale I once heard being passed down from an elder… no, child, this was how things were in my own time. When I was about the same age as you are now, I would watch them from the hills on splendid, sunny days, cheering after each one that I saw.

In those days, they were not afraid of the flames… Nor were they hiding from the fire, but were swimming in it, reveling in the way it flashed off their scales. They lived in a lava, so say our elders, but now they say so many things that are hard to believe in… Yet in the age of fire, dragons indeed lived inside the mountains, in their deep, deep caves close to the fiery hearth of heat, taking its overflowing loads onto themselves, never allowing the lava to burst and reach a village. They were the protectors then, you know, not the hounded ones they are now. At that time, folks knew lava only as drops from dragons arising from the very heart of the mountain, and we always stayed far back from their summit caves because of this. Away from the powerful force of fire and wings, whose sparks could fall down upon the unwary, setting people and trees below ablaze. In those days, child, you might find a dragon feather or a scale, but knew to never touch it at the times when dragons burst forth, blasting from the mountain depths, for they would be engulfed in the scathing flames of their mountain homes. Little did we know then, child, that the mountains themselves would soon wake with life, angry and hungry, without our guardian dragons to calm them, or feed themselves off their volatile power.

And then… yes, then it came, and everything changed. It, or maybe she, as many deemed it a woman, imbuing it with the name that I shall not mention here… And I shall not say it, my child, not because I am afraid, but because of my love for you and for all the once-fiery beings of my youth who still remain, for some say that, when you utter its name, you invite the terror and summon it to you, bringing destruction upon yourself and upon all around you. Yes, it was deemed female at all times, though I fail to see how something so ancient, so terrible in its power, could be like us in any way, be it a man or a woman, or how it could take any heed of our human words and incantations, let alone be summoned by them!

But I am straying, my dear, as any elderly woman does… One way or another, the monster is awakened. It has arisen from who knows what foul abyss, but the elders say that it has always been here, just waiting for its time. Unfortunately, that time is ours, my child. The end of dragons and the end of the age of fire is the time that we live in. And so it has been since the day that ravenous horror emerged.

One by one, they were falling, the dragons, the rulers of the sky. And they have fallen and fallen until they are almost no more. Where once you could see a dozen in a single day, then there were none. It spread like the plague, that beast, that fiend, destroying them one after another, extinguishing them across greater and greater expanses of our world, until all that was left was here, in the Valley. And all this happened in one woman’s lifetime, my dear… so much change, so much devastation, too much for a single human life…